Using Tricks From Other Writers

Even after 20 years as a journalist and three published novels, I still get stuck; my crappy first drafts still fill me with despair; I’m still convinced other writers know how to write faster, deeper, and smarter than I do. So I read writing blogs and books on how to write and newsletters on writing better. And here’s the thing about writing advice, from the gems in Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird to the piercing truths in Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules on Writing: It’s only good advice if it works for YOU.

Over the years I have found several bits of writing advice that work for me. They may not work for you, but I hope they’ll illustrate how you can pick and choose the tips that fit your unique process.

Ray Bradbury’s lists

In Zen in the Art of Writing, Ray Bradbury describes how he makes lists of nouns to spark ideas. I do this when I teach creative writing to kids. I set a timer for one or two minutes and have them write down as many nouns as they can. I do it myself when I’m stuck or having a bad writing day. Sometimes my lists have nothing to do with my work in progress, which is fine. Sometimes they surprise me. Sometimes my list is a poem.

For Bradbury, “These lists were the provocations, finally, that caused my better stuff to surface. I was feeling my way toward something honest, hidden under the trapdoor on the top of my skull. The lists ran something like this: THE LAKE. THE NIGHT. THE CRICKETS. THE RAVINE. THE ATTIC. THE BASEMENT. THE TRAPDOOR. THE BABY. THE CROWD. THE NIGHT TRAIN. THE FOG HORN. THE SCYTHE. THE CARNIVAL. THE CAROUSEL. THE DWARF. THE MIRROR MAZE. THE SKELETON.”

That list, years later, turned into Bradbury’s classic Something Wicked This Way Comes. Set a timer; write a list. See if it works for you.

Copying the masters: Richard Russo

After spending a year on a novel that went nowhere, I had a difficult time with writing the beginning of a new novel. After many false starts, I decided to fall back on an old trick artists have used for centuries: Copy the work of the masters in order to perfect your own art. I love Richard Russo, so I opened NOBODY’S FOOL and studied the first sentence:

“Upper Main Street in the village of North Bath, just above the town’s two-block-long business district, was quietly residential for three more blocks, then became even more quietly rural along old Route 27A, a serpentine two-lane blacktop that snaked its way through the Adirondacks of northern New York, with their tiny, down-at-the-heels resort towns, all the way to Montreal and prosperity.”

I’d never opened a novel with a description before. I had never thought of opening a novel with a description. But it appealed to me. I loved the scene Russo set in a single sentence, the visual image it called up in my brain. I knew I wanted my novel to open in a small town in the Adirondacks. So I wrote this:

“The train station in the village of Westport, N.Y., a mile west of the town’s block-long business district, is the kind of quaint, whimsical building that makes people think, ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful to live in a little town like this?’ The station is small but elaborate; a ghost of the wealth that once flowed into the Adirondacks in mahogany paneled train cars with lush velvet curtains and monogrammed portmanteaus. Cheerful yellow siding wraps around the station, and the roof is adorned with gables and copper spires and slate shingles and other beloved Victorian embellishments so picturesque it makes you want to put the whole thing in your pocket and take it home.”

It unlocked me. Once I had those first few sentences I put Russo away and wrote my book, the way I like to write. Try it with one of your favorite authors. You may surprise yourself.

Chuck Wendig’s Paper Boat

Yes, I spend way too much time clicking on links I find on Facebook or Twitter and then reading something and then I click on something else and then half my day is gone. But one day I happened upon terribleminds, a blog by novelist/screenwriter/game designer Chuck Wendig (http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2015/04/29/a-smattering-of-stupid-writer-tricks/). No, I’d never heard of him either. But his “Smattering of Stupid Writer Tricks” included this tidbit: “After today’s writing, ask: does my character have agency? Did she push on the story more than it pulled on her? Could she be replaced with a potato being passed around? Is she a little paper boat on the river, or is she the goddamn river? (Hint: she should be the river.)”

I’d been struggling with a main character who was going through a life crisis and watching her life fall apart all around her and something about it wasn’t working. And I realized it was because she was watching her life fall apart—she was the paper boat—instead of taking action, even stupid, bound-to-turn-out-badly action. As soon as I rewrote the story with my character pushing on the story instead of being pulled around, it clicked. I have the words “Be the goddamn river” on a sticky note next to my computer, and I make that vow every morning before I write.

Kathleen McCleary is the author of three novels—House and Home, A Simple Thing, and Leaving Haven—and has worked as a bookseller, bartender, and barista (all great jobs for gathering material for fiction). A Simple Thing (HarperCollins 2012) was nominated for the Library of Virginia Literary Awards. She was a journalist for many years before turning to fiction, and her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Good Housekeeping, Ladies Home Journal, and USA Weekend, as well as HGTV.com, where she was a regular columnist. She taught writing as an adjunct professor at American University in Washington, D.C., and teaches creative writing to kids ages 8-18 as an instructor with Writopia Labs, a non-profit. She also offers college essay coaching (http://thenobleapp.com), because she believes that life is stressful enough and telling stories of any kind should be exciting and fun. When she's not writing or coaching writing, she looks for any excuse to get out into the woods or mountains or onto a lake. She lives in northern Virginia with her husband and two daughters and Jinx the cat.

Glad you found something that works for you here, Alicia. I’m inspired by your persistent search for your character’s motivations before you write the scene. That’s what makes fiction read like real life, and draws readers in.

Kathleen, I think your opening paragraph is far better than Russo’s. Honestly, Russo’s read quite dull and wordy to me and more like a travel piece than an engaging opening to a novel. Your paragraph had much more personality. I read a lot of classic fiction and often pick up a sense of the author’s writing of a scene or description and learn from it– but the learning happens more like osmosis. Your suggestion to be more direct sounds like a worthy technique. Thanks for the tip. I find it inspiring that you are breaking the rule we hear from editors and writing teachers that it’s practically a sin to open a novel with a heavy description of setting. ‘Draw your readers in with character and action in openings’ is the standard advice. You’re fearless!

Hi Kathleen, Fabulous ideas as usual. And Westport! I can confirm that description to a tee after working at Camp Dudley YMCA for 12 magical summers. Westport can indeed fit inside your pocket. I don’t think I have any tips or tricks to offer: my writing waits until it’s fairly polished before it even consents to come out. Maybe not set in stone, but fast-hardening cement… what does surprise me is how I can take the PoV of even the most minor character and help inform the tale. In one or two cases, I’ve discovered that character is actually bigger than originally believed, which leads in the direction of other tales.

Hey, Will, we’ll have to talk Adirondacks sometime! My fiction is very character-driven, too. It’s amazing to me what different processes different writers have, and yet somehow we all come around to creating these amazing fictional worlds.

I have gleaned a lot of wonderful advice here on WU, but one bit that has been easy to remember and has really taken hold of me is Jo Eberhart’s recent advice to write one hour a day.

One hour is easy to fit into every day. I always have the story simmering in the back of my mind, and I’m not waiting around for a larger block of time while feeling guilty and getting nothing accomplished. Thanks, Jo!

A nice eye opener this morning, especially when I think of how I’ve struggled like you to get my character moving. Great ideas here, Kathleen.

And Paula Cappa’s point about starting a story with a description is a good one as well. I wasn’t aware that you shouldn’t start a story with a description. I’m glad I wasn’t aware. I don’t think it matters how you start as long as you draw the reader in.

Write the story first, and then research and rewrite. That way the story drives the research and not the other way around. It also provides a sense of freedom during the initial draft because I just make things up as I go along with the intent to fill in the blanks later.

Thanks for your post today, Kathleen, and to Chuck Wendig. Ironically, the beginning of my current novel has changed many times–but now starts with a description of the setting–a busy inner city hospital. We will see how that flies–and get that main character to stay on the straight and narrow–no drifting!!

My tip is to write about the writing. I usually journal about what’s going wrong or not taking place, and within a matter of moments have found my way through to a solution. Though it might prove to be temporary, at least it gets me into the river mindset, myself.

Great tips are always appreciated, and in your article WU has given us another useful guide. I’m in the middle of a “click on link follow for half a day” morning, but with your piece I’ll say it was worth it. Going to include in my website’s “For Writers” tab — so that I’ll always have a link to it!

Kathleen, Thanks for your mentally stimulating post. One way I get advice from other writers is by listening to Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac. It’s a five minute treasure trove of history and trivia about writers and literature, always ending with a poem: http://writersalmanac.org/

Taped on my home office wall, directly above my computer, is the most useful advice I’ve ever found on writing: “This is what I find most encouraging about the writing trades: They allow mediocre people who are patient and industrious to revise their stupidity, to edit themselves into something like intelligence. They also allow lunatics to seem saner than sane.”―Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Taped on the left side of my desk it is some advice Martha Graham gave to Agnes De Mille. Graham’s advice applies to writing or any other art form:

[De Mille] told Graham (documented in book Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham): “I was bewildered and worried that my entire scale of values was untrustworthy. … I confessed that I had a burning desire to be excellent, but no faith that I could be.”

Graham responded, very quietly: “There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. … No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”

I love Ray Bradbury’s magical dreamscapes and started making my list before I even finished the post. Somehow it helped me create a structure for my novel. Zen in the Art Of Writing is now on my “must read” list.

And Chuck Wendig’s image of a paper boat and a river is a brilliant metaphor to illustrate character agency. That’s Chuck’s genius–taking dull academic concepts and spray painting them with fresh, new colours.

“Be the goddamn river” now embellishes my computer, too!

My own advice for getting unblocked:

Pick up a pen and paper and start writing the scene in stream of consciousness. Write for at least 15 minutes and don’t take the pen off the page. If you don’t know what comes next, write “I don’t know what comes next.” Usually my mind comes up with “Maybe he does this…” It always works for me.

I honestly can say I haven’t borrowed “tricks” from other writers, except perhaps, write what you know and take some time out of every day to write. But those are pretty much basic tenets of writing. I don’t read books to copy other writers, but rather, NOT to copy them. Each scribe is unique; each has their own style. I don’t want to be the next Stephen King or Anne Rice. I want to be the first and only me in the literary world.

What a great post. When I’m stuck, I ask why, why, why. Actually, I ask why about everything … like a 3 yr old. It can be very irritating but also very illuminating. So, in a first draft, which I call “exploratory”, I end up talking to myself basically and it is a big hot mess but I can usually find my way out of the problem.

I read the opening chapters of well-known thriller writers such as John Lescroart (who I first came across with a short story about Sherlock Holmes and a “giant rat of Sumatra”), and Stephen Berry (The Jefferson Key).

I did this because I realized I was writing a mystery /thriller that was neither mysterious nor thrilling. I needed cliffhangers; I needed urgency. It was too mental and needed to become more “doing.”

Patterson, and writers like these guys–say what you want about their writing, but they make you turn the pages. They know how to write about characters doing something (even if they’re not thinking something, or doing something with depth, etc.) and they know how to write cliffhangers. Turning the pages equals selling the books.

Characters who do, and chapters that hang (and somewhat remain complete in of themselves) keep up the pace, and are more interesting than books about geniuses who think but don’t do.

So I unabashedly stole some simple and unartsy tricks from these guys, like writing grabbing first sentences, writing short paragraphs and even James Frey-like sentence-paragraphs and fragments (though I refuse to write very short Patterson-like chapters, unless it happens organically) and ending chapters that anticipate further movement of their characters, etc.

And, shockingly, my manuscript took off. It really is much better.

Sometimes “stealing from the best” means “stealing from those who sell the best.” Better, but more snooty, writers than I remain unpublished. Worse writers than I make millions writing books, which means they’re better writers than I, because I want to do that and they already do. We thumb up our noses at writers to our own peril.

I was reviewing books on writing and I came across a thin book by Dianne Doubtfire called The Craft of Novel Writing. She’s mentioned to be either an owl or a lark. It’s that simple if you need to make time to write. Another piece of advise I liked is creating a chapter list to give your novel direction.

Kathleen, this is a great post! I am especially intrigued by Ray Bradbury’s idea of making lists of nouns. What a fun way to push through a moment of writer’s block. And to think it inspired one of his greatest novels.

Right now I’m pretty obsessed with soaking up inspiration from my the nonfiction book, Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. She has a section where she talks about not letting the creative fire go out, because when it does – when we spend too much time away – it’s that much harder to get it lit again. I know that’s not what you were asking specifically, but it’s something I hang onto especially while writing during these early motherhood years of chaos and minimal time.

Thanks for this helpful post. A boost from Bradbury or Russo is always productive.

When I’m stuck, I read a passage from the stories of John Cheever. His straight-forward writing style and his ability to zero in on the telling details work to help me maintain a straight-forward approach and seek the right details. For example, in Clancy in the Tower of Babel he writes “the south wind that in the city smells of drains” and in The Chaste Clarissa “The storm would metamorphose the island. The beaches would be empty. Drawers would stick.” A few paragraphs of that simple brilliance is often enough to start the engines and keep me from a tendency to get ornate.